Covered notebooks for narration

I took over teaching Sunday School at our small church plant this past October. It consisted of one class with children aging from four to nine and the curriculum was based on catechism questions teaching the formation of God's covenant people throughout the Bible. It did not come with the usual student projects of crafts or coloring pages which was fine since I wanted to create a more open style for the children's work.

I made up these individual notebooks for them to decorate and use for the entire year of lessons. I have done this before for various other class projects in our former churches and for other purposes. I used basic kraft paper found everywhere and a regular glue stick. Once you cut the paper for a generous folding around the edges, the only trick is to cut the small triangular cuts at the top and bottom of the binding so you can easily fold the paper and glue it inside the front and back covers. Then you can glue the corners down to create a squared off finish. Running your hands smoothly across the cover helps pull the kraft paper tightly as you close the book up to let it dry. It really is very easy and probably reminiscent of covering school books with paper grocery bags for the year if you're of a certain vintage like me. Yikes!
The children worked on filling in the pages with various projects that I often created throughout the year and I took them home each Sunday and brought them back for the next class. It helped to be able to look back at previous lessons when reviewing and introducing the next lesson. Also when we started the lesson part of the class, looking at last week's lesson helped with group narration work. The children could retell what they remembered of the previous lesson and even explain what their own drawing or writing represented from the lesson when they had opportunity to complete their own work. Several of the students struggled with a blank page to fill with their own ideas so I tried to limit that frustration by providing more concrete items for them to work with. Some examples are included at the end of this post. 
We did have an Open House in January so the work they had completed so far could be shown to parents and grandparents. But they did not get to take their notebooks home for good until we finished the school year at the end of June and they all seemed excited and proud to look through it. One of the children told me that she has since added some of her own Bible journaling notes to the leftover pages. I treasure the time I was able to spend with them this past year and am looking forward to continuing on this fall.